Reset your mental clock, for time has been reborn

Nature is ruled by immutable laws – or so we have long believed. But evidence from across the cosmos is forcing a rethink of what time is

Lee Smolin

Sunday June 09 2013, 1.01am, The Sunday Times

Lee Smolin

Sunday June 09 2013, 1.01am, The Sunday Times

What is time? This deceptively simple question is the single most important problem facing science as we probe more deeply into the fundamentals of the universe. All the mysteries that physicists and cosmologists face — from the Big Bang to the future of the universe, from the puzzles of quantum physics to the unification of the forces and particles — come down to the nature of time.

Time is the most pervasive aspect of our everyday experience. Everything we think, feel or do reminds us of its existence. We perceive the world as a flow of moments that make up our life. But physicists and philosophers alike have long told us (and many people think) that time is the ultimate illusion.